Directions:Briefly describe the case for the rest of the class -- the situation and the problems involved. Then, using your knowledge of responding effectively to student writing, pose possible alternatives for the teacher's actions that might have resulted in more positive results for the student, the teacher, and the rest of the class.
In a freshman university English class, a professor gives a prompt that asks his students (who are often ESL students) to reflect on the definition of a "good family," specifically in the context of American terms. The professor also allows his students, knowing that not all of them will be familiar with the "American good family," to reflect on their own personal experiences to define what a good family is to them. An ESL student responds appropriately (and very well) to a writing prompt in class, but his piece is littered with grammar/punctualization/sentence structure errors. The problem in question is how to get the student to elaborate and tell his story, from his voice, in the best way possible but with corrections in spelling and punctuation. What this boils down to for me is, "how can we get a student to write properly without taking their voice away or discouraging them?" My advice to his professor would be to teach him why - or to only focus on occasional problem-words at first, i.e. sounding out carefully the differences between words like "leaving" and "living." There may be a couple of areas in his essay, too, where he could more specifically address the prompt, but for the most part otherwise it seems to be a successful response, outside of spelling and punctuation missteps.
Directions: Briefly describe the case for the rest of the class -- the situation and the problems involved. Then, using your knowledge of responding effectively to student writing, pose possible alternatives for the teacher's actions that might have resulted in more positive results for the student, the teacher, and the rest of the class.
In a freshman university English class, a professor gives a prompt that asks his students (who are often ESL students) to reflect on the definition of a "good family," specifically in the context of American terms. The professor also allows his students, knowing that not all of them will be familiar with the "American good family," to reflect on their own personal experiences to define what a good family is to them. An ESL student responds appropriately (and very well) to a writing prompt in class, but his piece is littered with grammar/punctualization/sentence structure errors. The problem in question is how to get the student to elaborate and tell his story, from his voice, in the best way possible but with corrections in spelling and punctuation. What this boils down to for me is, "how can we get a student to write properly without taking their voice away or discouraging them?" My advice to his professor would be to teach him why - or to only focus on occasional problem-words at first, i.e. sounding out carefully the differences between words like "leaving" and "living." There may be a couple of areas in his essay, too, where he could more specifically address the prompt, but for the most part otherwise it seems to be a successful response, outside of spelling and punctuation missteps.